You ’ve heard of being in the proper berth at the right time . But these 10 ridiculously unlucky individuals have a endowment for being in the unseasonable place at the wrong time , or being in the exact veracious place but leaving just before the veracious time . Like the miserable sap who wasthis closeto being a penis of the greatest rock ' n ' roll ring of all meter . Or the only person in the history of the world who was ill-fated enough to take a nap in the direct route of a fall meteorite . Or the one guy in a little townsfolk who did n’t buy a winning drawing ticket .
Although most people feel they make their own luck , you ca n’t help feeling that in a lot of these cause , spoiled luckcame through no defect of their own . Maybe these kinsfolk walk under a ravel or petted a black cat .
So if you ’re having a sorry twenty-four hour period or feeling patently unlucky , learn through these 10 news report of woe and feel a short good thinking , " At least I ’m not them . " Let ’s start with the co - founder of a elephantine tech company who left before it made the crowing time .
10: Apple Co-Founder Passed Up Billions
Steve Jobs . Steve Wozniak . Ron Wayne . Wait , who ?
Yup , there was a third co - founder of Apple Computers , an Atari colleague of Wozniak ’s name Ron Wayne . In 1976 , Jobs and Wozniak were two whiz kids in their 20s with no real business experience , so they brought in the 40 - something Wayne to bring home the bacon " adult superintendence " and help with engineering documentation .
It was Wayne who typed up the very first Apple contract , specify each piece ’s role in the company and their cut of the plowshare : Jobs ( 45 percentage ) , Wozniak ( 45 percent ) and Wayne ( 10 percent ) . Wayne even created the first Apple logo , a wood block - trend depiction of Newton under the celebrated Malus pumila Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree .
But just 12 days later , Wayne called it quits . He knew he did n’t quite fit in with the industrious son geniuses and did n’t see a place for himself — or his own ideas — in the future of the company . Plus , he was worried that he might have to use his personal assets to devote any debts they incurred ( unlike the other two , he had a house ) . So he deal back his shares for a total of $ 2,300 — $ 800 immediately and the remaining $ 1,500 afterward [ sources : Martin , Wayne ] .
Those plowshare , if Wayne had held on to them for the past 40 - plus years , would now be worth tight to $ 100 billion . That ’s a fate of baffled nada .
Overall , Wayne pronounce he does n’t regret his decision and would in all probability have stop long before Apple reached its record - bankrupt $ 1 trillion rating . Butin a Facebook essay , he admitted that he probably should have sting around at least until 1980 when Apple went public and Jobs and Wozniak became instant millionaires .
And then there ’s more bad lot for Wayne concerning his original Apple contract bridge . Wayne kept the document in a dusty file cabinet for decades until he finally sell it to a collector in the former nineties for $ 500 . That very same contract sell at auction in 2011 for $ 1.59 million [ source : Martin ] .
9: Twice Bombed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Of the or so 283,000 Japanese survivor of the atomic blasts that obliterated the city ofHiroshimaand Nagasaki in August 1945 , Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in rare company . Only about 10 unlucky someone were witnesses to both bombing , but Yamaguchi ’s was the unluckiest case on record [ germ : Atomic Bomb Museum ] .
In 1945 , 29 - year - older Yamaguchi worked as an engineer for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries , and was in Hiroshima on August 6 for a patronage trip . step off a tramcar , he was envelop by a blinding white light . " Little Boy , " the firstatomic weaponever used in state of war , had detonated just 2 miles ( 3 kilometers ) away . Yamaguchi exist , but suffered serious burns across his torso and two ruptured eardrums . More than 80,000 military personnel , women and children were killed by the good time .
Eager to get home , Yamaguchi braved the peak radiation zone of downtown Hiroshima to catch a wagon train the very next day to Nagasaki . On August 9 , while in his power tell his gaffer about the horror he witnessed in Hiroshima , the U.S. military force cast off " Fat Man " on Nagasaki . As the elbow room filled with the same blind livid light , " I thought the mushroom cloud had followed me from Hiroshima , " Yamaguchi told the British issue the Independent , in 2009 .
Yamaguchi kept subdued about his doubled - bombing status until his 80s , when he wrote a memoir visit " Twice bomb , Twice outlast " and became an counselor for denuclearization . " It was my fate that I experienced this twice and I am still alive to convey what happened , " he said in an consultation when he was 93 and in the concluding stages of malignant neoplastic disease , probably due to exposure to so much actinotherapy from the two atomic bombs [ source : McNeill ] .
8: Only Person Hit By a Meteorite
On Nov. 30 , 1954 , Alabama occupant Ann Hodges became the first — and peradventure only — person to ever be struck by a settle meteorite . The 8.5 - pound ( 3.8 kilogram ) space rock burned across a clear blue sky before crash through Hodge ’s cap , bounce off a radio and striking her in the coxa as she catch a wink on the couch .
According to uranologist and meteorite expert Michael Reynolds , the betting odds of a meteorite striking a populated area , let alone an private person , are enormously distant . " You have a better opportunity of getting score by a tornado and a deadbolt of lightning and a hurricane all at the same clock time , " Reynoldstold National Geographic .
Hodges ' life did n’t get much better after getting taste by the interstellar traveler . Although she only digest a filthy bruise from the incident , it thrust Hodges and her hubby into the media spotlight . Overcome by the mob of hoi polloi gathered outside her firm , Hodges was remove to a hospital to recover .
Next come a nasty courtyard battle with her landlord , who exact the famous infinite rock ‘n’ roll was hers . Hodges eventually gain ground the lawsuit , but never find out a buyer for what she and her husband had hope would be a valuable object . rather , Hodges had a nervous breakdown , split up her husband and died at age 52 in a breast feeding house . The meteorite remain on display in the Alabama Museum of Natural History [ germ : Nobel ] .
7: ‘Best’ Beatles Drummer Dumped Just Before Fame
Pete Besthas rightfully been dubbed " the unluckiest man in music " for being dropped as the drummer for the Beatles in 1962 , mere week before " Love Me Do " rocketed the band to stardom .
well first metthe Beatlesin the late fifties when they were still called The Quarrymen and played the gap dark gig at a Liverpool cafe have by Best ’s mamma . At the meter , the set lie in of a revolving casting of musicians , include several drummers . It was n’t until 1960 that the core radical of John Lennon , Paul McCartney and George Harrison had commingle into the Beatles and demand a drummer for a serial of gig in Hamburg , Germany .
They ask Best , who had beat for his own Liverpool striation , The Blackjacks , to come along . The Beatles ' time in Hamburg was transformative for the untried rocker . They found their trademark blues - infused sound and amassed gang of giddy fans . Best experience like he became close to the other boy while hold up in ramshackle apartments in Hamburg ’s violent light territory .
But Best was in for a rude waking up when the dance orchestra returned to England in 1962 . Right before the Beatles were scheduled to record a few singles for record label EMI , the band ’s coach Brian Epstein called Best into his office and broke the bad news program .
" He said , ' Pete , I do n’t know how to tell you this . The boy need you out ' — those were the words — ' and it ’s already been arranged , " recalled Bestin an interviewwith the Financial Review . Various reasons have been situate for the dismission , but most likely it was simply that the others bond better with replacement Ringo Starr .
Best took it hard , even attempting suicide in the sixties , before coming to grips with his short - subsist clip as a Beatle . In 1968 , while the Beatles were still riding high , he was work at a bread factory to affirm his family , later on becoming a civil servant . But he eventually embark on his own band and ultimately receive a juicy royal line halt from " The Beatles Anthology , " released in 1995 , which included early demo with Best behind the drums . But he never spoke to John , George or Paul after he was sacked [ source : Connolly ] .
6: Lost Five Homes in Five Hurricanes
Melanie Martinez is lucky to be live . In 2012 , Martinez , her married man and her aged female parent were trapped in their attic as the storm surge from Hurricane Isaac flooded her home south of New Orleans . They urgently forge and punch their fashion through the roof where they were at last rescue along with their five cats and three dog .
Yet being alive is about the only matter lucky about Martinez , who has the unfortunate distinction of losing not one , not two , but five separate houses to five separatehurricanes . True , Martinez chose to reconstruct her sign of the zodiac five times in the same Louisiana flowage plain , but what are the betting odds that Hurricanes Betsy ( 1965 ) , Juan ( 1985 ) , George ( 1998),Katrina(2005 ) and Isaac ( 2012 ) would rip through each and every one of them ?
To add affront to hurt , Martinez ’s last house was choose for a $ 20,000 makeover by the A&E realism show " Hideous Houses , " which set up a unexampled kitchen , fresh appliance and a unexampled sewing elbow room just for Martinez . The shift was aired a few weeks before the reaching of Hurricane Isaac . Needless to say , it ’s all gone now [ root : Carroll ] .
When ask why she continued to survive in that spot , Martineztold The Guardianin 2012 , " I was born here . It ’s domicile , home , home . But we need to move somewhere that ’s hilly , you recognise ? To a mansion on a J. J. Hill . "
5: Three Vacations, Three Terrorist Attacks
Jason Cairns - Lawrence and his partner Jenny require a new change of location broker . The luckless British couple book a serial publication of ill - fated external holidays in the 2000s that refuse all probability .
First was a sightseeing trip to New York City that come up them in the Big Apple on Sept. 11 , 2001 when hijacker flew two plane into theWorld Trade Center towers , killing more than 2,700 people in the unfit terrorist attack on U.S. land .
A few years later , Jason and Jenny choose to vacation closer to home , booking a few night in London in July 2005 . A day into their sojourn , four self-annihilation torpedo attacked the London Underground , killing 52 people and wounding more than 700 .
Looking for a getaway destination in 2008 , the distich chose Mumbai , India . To their horror , terrorist struck yet again , opening fire on a luxuriousness hotel and railway system station in the country ’s largest city , killing 174 people [ source : Roy ] .
Three vacations . Three of the ten ’s deadliest terrorist attack . We can only assume poor Jason and Jenny are on a lifetime CIA watch tilt .
4: He Invented the Telephone, Didn’t Profit
Do n’t dare utter the nameAlexander Graham Bellin Italy . There , schoolchildren have been taught for over a century that the rightful discoverer of the telephone was in fact Antonio Meucci , an Italian artificer who filed a preliminary patent for his " teletrofono " in the United States five geezerhood before Bell , but then tragically died before gain credit for his existence - changing invention .
And it ’s not just Italians and Italian - Americans who believe Meucci had a case against Bell . The U.S. House of Representativespassed a resolutionin 2002 acknowledge Meucci ’s contribution to the invention of thetelephone . As early as the 1830s , while live in Havana , Cuba , Meucci discovered that speech sound could be transmitted as electrical impulse through copper wire . In 1850 , Meucci and his married woman moved to New York City to further develop the technology .
Arriving in the U.S. , Meucci was plagued by a series of reversal . His married woman fell sick and became paralyzed . To stay in cutaneous senses with her , he rig a unforesightful - distance phone machine from his workshop to her bedroom , which he prove publicly in 1860 but meet no attention from the English - talk press .
Meucci was burned in a steamship accident and fell upon hard economical time . At one spot , his wife sold all of his telephone paradigm for $ 6 to a secondhand workshop , so he started from scratch . In 1871 , without the cash in hand to file a permanent patent on his innovation , he paid $ 10 for a " caveat , " which is a notice of an impendent patent of invention . Sadly , he did n’t even have the $ 10 to renew the caveat after 1874 .
Bell , who shared a lab with Meucci , file his own patent in 1876 and then got a remunerative deal with Western Union . Feeling that Bell had stolen his ideas , Meucci sued him . The typeface was pending in the U.S. Supreme Court when Meucci expire in 1889 . The case died with him , and Bell was considered the discoverer of the phone [ beginning : Carroll ] .
3: Only Villager Who Didn’t Buy a Wining Lottery Ticket
Every Christmas , in the small Spanish agriculture town of Sodeto , the homemaker ’s association ( a radical represent homeowners in the townspeople ) goes door - to - threshold sellinglottery ticketsas a fundraiser for community issue . In Spain , the special Christmas lottery is call in El Gordo ( The Fat One ) , because it delivers the single full-grown payday of the year . It ’s also one of the world ’s honest-to-goodness uninterrupted lottery , first check in 1812 .
In 2011 , the kitty was up to $ 950 million , the enceinte ever . Even so , some residents of Sodeto were reluctant to bounce for the $ 26 ticket , since Spain was in the depth of a disabling economical recession plus a prolonged drouth . But since the money went for a good movement , each of the 70 kinsperson in town chipped in , buying at least a constituent of a tag .
All except one man . Filmmaker Costis Mitsotakis hold out outside of Ithiel Town in an old b he was renovating and the homemaker ’s connection ladies did n’t make it out that twelvemonth . No big deal , proper ? Wrong .
defy the unbelievable odds , Sodeto hit the jackpot , and each of the village phratry walked away withprize moneyranging from $ 130,000 on the humble terminal to several millions on the gamey end . sodbuster drove into town on their tractors and the mayor took to the streets with a loud-hailer to felicitate the jubilant crowd .
Mitsotakis , speedily dubbedthe world ’s unluckiest man , took it all in stride . He had actuate to Sodeto eight years earlier to be with his girlfriend . The romance did n’t last , but Mitsotakis fell in love with the town and decided to stay . He was glad for the villagers , humble farming class clamber with heavy debt , and even happier to find the perfect open fora new documentary film .
2: Olympics Hero Who Became a Terror Suspect
The scene was the 1996 CentennialOlympic Gamesin Atlanta , Georgia . Early on the morning of July 27 , as K tuck in Centennial Olympic Park for a concert , a security guard named Richard Jewell spotted asuspiciousgreen backpack sitting alone on the earth .
Moving quickly , Jewell and other officeholder ushered concertgoers forth from the bag only seconds before it violently exploded . A homemade pipe dud propelled nails and screw into the crew , killing one char and wounding more than 100 . Casualties would certainly have been high if Jewell had n’t alerted confidence and begun to remove the country .
Initially acclaim as a submarine sandwich , Jewell quickly recover himself under investigation as a suspect in the bombing . A local newspaper , the Atlanta Journal - Constitution , published a special edition the very next day diagnose Jewell as a direction of police attending and national media followed suit . News vans park outside Jewell ’s home and barraged him with questions . The local police and FBI conduct multiple investigations . It was n’t until October that Jewell ’s name was finally clear .
But the harm was already done . Even though the actual Olympian bomber , Eric Rudolph , was ultimately caught and convicted , Jewell ’s name was forever marred by the false accusal of his intimacy with the domestic scourge attack . He died at 44 yr old from ramification of diabetes in 2007 . However he did manage to deliver the goods settlements from NBC and CNN and a 2006 commendation from Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue for economise animation at the Olympics [ reservoir : Sack ] .
1: Seven Brushes With Death
multitude often call Frano Selak " the luckiest adult male in the reality " forsurvivingseven freestanding brushes with expiry , but the 89 - year - old former euphony instructor from Croatia sees thing differently .
" I always think I was unlucky to have been in [ these accident ] in the first home but you ca n’t enjoin hoi polloi what they do n’t desire to believe , " Selaktold The Telegraphin 2010 .
Selak ’s first death - hold up escape amount in 1962 , when his train from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik leap the tracks and careened into an wintry river , drowning 17 confrere passenger . Selak himself suffered a busted arm and hypothermia . A class later , on his first and only airplane flight , theplane went down , killing 19 . fantastically , Selak was suck up out of a misfunction room access and landed whole in a haystack [ origin : Hough ] .
The bang just kept on total . Selak was on a bus that slue off the route into yet another frigid river . Two of his cars caught flaming , one burning off his hair . He was hit by a jitney in Zagreb . And in 1996 , he sheer to avoid an oncoming hand truck and barrel off the road , jump costless at the last second as his car plunged 300 feet ( 91 m ) off a drop .
The only sincerely golden thing that happened to Selak was winning $ 1 million when he bought his first - ever lottery ticket in 2005 to lionise his fifth man and wife . " I think all the early wedding were disasters too,“Selak joked to the Telegraph .
Lots More Information
There ’s nothing that makes you palpate quite as lucky as reading about other people ’s bad luck . Not that any of these people deserved the risky luck that befell them , nor am I reveling in their misery . It just makes you thankful that your living is full of average speculative fortune — missing your plug in flight to Dallas , locking your keys in the motorcar — and not the life - altering sort . It ’s also heartening to see that after initial struggles , most of the people on our list come up to terms with their situation and even emerged thankful for their miss opportunity and lousy luck . dependable for them !
